Twitchy Witchy Girl

The premise for The Leftovers was a definite attention grabber. Who wouldn't want to read a book about a supposed rapture? I desperately wanted to know what happened to those left behind— how would they cope. Apparently in various stereotypical ways: cults, drugs, running away, pretending everything is as normal as it ever was, etc. They all seemed plausible to me just not unique; even with Holy Wayne and the Guilty Remnant. All I could think was, Of course cults are going to pop up. Of course people are going to want to make things how they were before.

As bizarre as this book could have been... it simply wasn't. In a way it felt like I was just reading a suburban family novel. Not something that's as peculiar as the rapture. There wasn't any attention grabbing, holy-shit-what-just-happened action or dramatic, gut-wrenching, cry-your-eyes-out scenes. It was very unremarkable. Even when the G.R members start being murdered it was uneventful.

There were a lot of different ways that this book could have went especially since we were given many different characters. Yet, everything seemed ordinary and monotonous. I felt like the characters never really changed or grew from who they were in the beginning.

I really wanted to love The Leftovers, but it’s just one of those books where you love the premise and everything that it could have been only to be let down by the story itself.